Eliot Street Bridge over Route 3

Address	Eliot Street
MACRIS ID	BIL.924
Built	1953

The bridge was built in 1953 for the relocated U.S. Route 3, which the state laid out through Billerica in 1952 and 1953 as a four-lane divided highway with limited access, running from Route 128 in Burlington to the Lowell bypass in Chelmsford and bypassing the town centers. This bridge in South Billerica, near the Bedford line, carried the local road (recorded as Elliot Street and as Manning Road) over the highway. Designed by Duffill Associates, it had three continuous spans of 61 feet in rolled steel beams, 187 feet long, with tan brick facing on the wing walls laid in projecting horizontal panels and concrete scored in a grid, "typically 1950s, highly geometric detail."

In the Route 3 North project, the state's first design-build highway contract, Modern Continental Construction widened Route 3 to three lanes each way between Route 128 and the New Hampshire line and replaced 40 bridges; the work was finished early in 2005. When the overpass was rebuilt, the Yankee Doodle Bike Path Committee met with the state about "a divided, bi-directional bike path across the new Manning Road bridge," to carry the bike path over Route 3 on its way to the old railroad bed. The present bridge, of continuous steel beams about 216 feet long, was built in 2004.

Eliot Street Bridge over Route 3

Eliot Street Bridge over Route 3

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